


retributive justice

by wasneeliw



Category: Avengers (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Clint Feels, Clint Has Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 19:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3861298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wasneeliw/pseuds/wasneeliw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda fights Clint after the events of Age of Ultron. </p><p>MAJOR SPOILER ALERT</p>
            </blockquote>





	retributive justice

Wanda didn’t understand why Hawkeye had invited her to a sparring session. She had no desire to see the man who had not even deigned to appear at her brother’s funeral. Perhaps he did not even know his name. Perhaps he had never bothered to find out. 

Wanda would never forget his name or his face or the way his smile stretched along behind him as he outran sound. Try as she might, she could never forget his name either. Clinton Francis Barton. Its echoes rang through her dreams, dissonant syllables marring her brother’s laughter, distorted by the wind and whistling bullets. 

Barton was standing dead centre on the mat looking straight at her as she entered. She wondered distantly how long he had been standing there, waiting, simply waiting and watching. He maintained his gaze to the point of rudeness yet she knew rudeness was the least of his sins. She kept her gaze steady, meeting his quiet challenge. She could perceive the recent motion of arrows tearing through air and wood, but he made no move to touch the weapon hanging on the wall, and so she understood this to be a weaponless contest. No matter. She was weapon. Had been made a weapon. 

Removing her jacket, she adopted her beginning stance and with the almost imperceptible nodding of heads, it began. Her first blow was deflected easily, along with almost every one that followed. When she finally managed to introduce her fist to his shoulder, she knew it was only because the seasoned assassin allowed it. The best predators always toy with their prey.

“Don’t patronize me, Barton.”

:I’m not the patronizing one, Maximoff.:

She paused, startled. His lips were still, yet she had heard him. Powerful though she was, she knew she could not hear people’s thoughts unless she made a special, concentrated effort to. This man had made her hear him. He had managed to project his thoughts at her. His taunt. Barton, she allowed, was something special, special but stupid. It took a special brand of stupidity to challenge her to use her powers.  
Raising her arms, she sent blasts of red at him, which he expertly dodged. 

:Guess I overestimated you, Maxi. :

That was just a taster, she thought, allowing the red to course through her. He came at her again, clipping her in the belly, but she barely felt it as the energy surged through her fingertips. He did the impossible and managed to avoid the blast again. 

:Surely you can do better than that. Hell, even your brother could. :

She fought to control her anger as she fired repeatedly at him, finally grazing him in the thigh. He smirked at her, not even pausing to jibe. Somehow the quirking of his lips angered her more than his words, and she unleashed a wave of red. Barton clutched his bleeding arm and charged towards her, still as arrogant as ever. Her next attack left him staggering, red spreading on his abdomen, but he refused to fall. 

Still as weak as your brother, I see, he sneered into her head and she let the months of suppressed rage course through every vein, her fists, engulfed by the glow, striking Barton relentlessly. Blood was dripping out of his mouth by now, and his flesh gave easily under her fists, but the only sounds he made were jeers and wet laughter. As her blows rained down on him, he made no move protect himself, simply lying there, open, arms splayed by his side, an invitation. 

“Yield, damn you, yield!” 

He simply lay there grinning his sickening red grin, as if he’d won. Enraged, she thrust her consciousness into his. She was going to give him the worst nightmare of his life. Loki would seem like a pleasant lullaby in comparison.

The moment she entered his mind, she saw her brother, bullets entering over and over again, the whistling of the metal, and the crisp, clear sounds of his laughter. Barton’s pale hands moving frantically to keep all the red in, keep the red from staining the blue and white. Barton’s mind screaming even before she had ever intruded, as he realizes that it’s all flowing through his fingers. That Pietro’s blood is running like sand through sieves. Vaguely she sees another figure, rage in every line, rigid with anger. It was her, she knew instinctively, except viewed from above. On the day of the funeral she had worn black. 

Then names, incessantly sounding; Barney Barton, Phil Coulson, Pietro Maximoff. Pietro Maximoff. Pietro Maximoff, loudest still. In English and Sokovian and the universal language of grief. The tortured, strangled sounds like an anthem, a eulogy, a desperate prayer for forgiveness, coursing constantly through his consciousness. His grief and guilt are like tangible persons in his mind, ghosts in a host of other ghosts. And she sees that there is nothing she can do that he hasn’t already done to himself. 

She tears her mind out of his, trying to cleanse her consciousness of the mournful faces and moans of the dead. Her face is wet. Barton’s eyes are glassy but he contorts his ravaged face into a smirk and taunts her still. 

:Your brother-your brother was a cunt and a wuss. The little fucker deserved to die. :

But she can see through the emptiness of the words, at the empty man trying to provoke her into expending the pool of crimson around his body. 

:Fight me: he demands. 

:Fight me: he begs, even as she clutches the body she broke, gentle hands cradling his head, lulling him into a pleasant, silent, dream. 

"Clint, I forgive you," she whispers, though he can no longer hear her, she needs to tell him.

"Will you forgive me?"

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment :) tips ? Constructive criticism?


End file.
